Daily Features

In Their Own Words: George Nelson, Charles Eames, and Alexander Girard

In newly restored recordings, curator Mickey Friedman revisits the designers’ Sample Lesson for a new type of arts education.

By Jennifer Krichels, Superscript October 3, 2013

Yesterday, furniture manufacturer Herman Miller added a new installment to its online publication Why, which it launched this summer as a platform for discussions about design. In the site’s latest piece, “Lessons Learned,” Amber Bravo examines the story behind three audio recordings of legendary furniture designers George Nelson, Charles Eames, and Alexander Girard discussing their groundbreaking 1952 “Sample Lesson” lecture, which proposed a new, multimedia approach to arts education that involved film, slides, sound, music, narration, and even smell.

A photograph taken during the Sample Lesson's six-day run at UCLA, which followed its premiere in Georgia. The program drew huge audiences by its third day; among the audience members was Mildred “Mickey” Friedman, a young graduate student at the time.

The lecture evolved out of Nelson’s proposal that the University of Georgia in Athens adopt a new arts education policy aimed less at professional training and more at students’ interests. As Bravo reports:

He advocated that by using mechanized aids like slides, film, and audio, the learning experience could be expedited and augmented. “It was perfectly clear that much time was being wasted through methods originally developed for other purposes,” he explains. “For example, one class was finishing a two-week exercise demonstrating that a given color is not a fixed quantity to the eye but appears to change according to the colors around it. In a physics class, such a point would have been made in about five minutes with a simple apparatus, and just as effectively.”

Nelson began working with Eames and then Girard to put together a sample lecture that would demonstrate their ideas about a new curriculum. After debuting the lesson in Georgia, the Sample Lesson filled an auditorium at UCLA for six days—but that was the end of its run.

The Book

Problems of Design George Nelson

A graduate student at the time, Mildred “Mickey” Friedman was one of the lucky few who got to attend the trio's lecture. Two years after becoming the design curator at The Walker Art Center, Friedman began research for a new exhibition entitled Nelson/Eames/Girard/Propst: The Design Process at Herman Miller. Traveling the country to visit each designer in preparation for the 1975 exhibition, she revisited the topic of the Sample Lesson with each, revealing their impressions of the event and its lasting effect on their own work. Herman Miller's newly restored audio recordings of each interview are available below:

Charles and Ray Eames on "The Sample Lesson"

George Nelson on "The Sample Lesson"

Alexander Girard on "The Sample Lesson"

An image from the Nelson/Eames/Girard/Propst: The Design Process at Herman Miller exhibition curated by Mickey Friedman, then design curator at The Walker Art Center, in 1975.

Hotel Chelsea Lives On in Photographs

How Architecture Works: Witold Rybczynski Discusses His 18th Book

comments powered by Disqus

Announcements

Now is Better by Stefan Sagmeister

Now is Better

By Stefan Sagmeister
Publisher: Phaidon Press
Published: October 2023

Combining art, design, history, and quantitative analysis, transforms data sets into stunning artworks that underscore his positive view of human progress, inspiring us to think about the future with much-needed hope.

Order the book.

Design Emergency: Building a Better Future by Alice Rawsthorn and Paola Antonelli

Design Emergency: Building a Better Future

By Alice Rawsthorn and Paola Antonelli
Publisher: Phaidon Press
Published: May 2022

Rawsthorn and Antonelli tell the stories of the remarkable designers, architects, engineers, artists, scientists, and activists who are at the forefront of positive change worldwide. Focusing on four themes—Technology, Society, Communication, and Ecology—the authors present a unique portrait of how our great creative minds are developing new design solutions to the major challenges of our time, while helping us to benefit from advances in science and technology.

Order the book.

Why Design Matters: Conversations with the World’s Most Creative People by Debbie Millman

Why Design Matters: Conversations with the World's Most Creative People

By Debbie Millman
Publisher: Harper Design
Published: February 22, 2022

Debbie Millman—author, educator, brand consultant, and host of the widely successful and award-winning podcast “Design Matters”—showcases dozens of her most exciting interviews, bringing together insights and reflections from today’s leading creative minds from across diverse fields.

Order the book.

Milton Glaser: POP by Steven Heller, Mirko Ilić, and Beth Kleber

Milton Glaser: POP

By Steven Heller, Mirko Ilić, and Beth Kleber
Publisher: The Monacelli Press
Published: March 2023

This collection of work from graphci design legend Milton Glaser’s Pop period features hundreds of examples of the designer’s work that have not been seen since their original publication, demonstrating the graphic revolution that transformed design and popular culture.

Order the book.

Meet Me by the Fountain: An Inside History of the Mall by Alexandra Lange

Meet Me by the Fountain: An Inside History of the Mall

By Alexandra Lange
Publisher: Bloomsbury
Published: June 2022

Chronicles postwar architects’ and merchants’ invention of the shopping mall, revealing how the design of these marketplaces played an integral role in their cultural ascent. Publishers Weekly writes, “Contending that malls answer ‘the basic human need’ of bringing people together, influential design critic Lange advocates for retrofitting abandoned shopping centers into college campuses, senior housing, and ‘ethnocentric marketplaces’ catering to immigrant communities. Lucid and well researched, this is an insightful study of an overlooked and undervalued architectural form.”

Order the book.

Die Fläche: Design and Lettering of the Vienna Secession, 1902–1911 (Facsimile Edition) by Diane V. Silverthorne, Dan Reynolds, and Megan Brandow-Faller

Die Fläche: Design and Lettering of the Vienna Secession, 1902–1911 (Facsimile Edition)

By Diane V. Silverthorne, Dan Reynolds, and Megan Brandow-Faller
Publisher: Letterform Archives Books
Published: October 2023

This facsimile edition of Die Fläche, recreates every page of the formative design periodical in full color and at original size, accompanied by essays that contextualize the work, highlighting contributions by pathbreaking women, innovative lettering artists, and key practitioners of the new “surface art,” including Rudolf von Larisch, Alfred Roller, and Wiener Werkstätte founders Koloman Moser and Josef Hoffmann.

Order the book.